5 Important COVID-19 Prevention Tips to Follow at Offices

The COVID-19 pandemic has created havoc in the lives of people all over the world. However, as people are getting back to their regular lives amidst this new normal, it is important for workplaces to implement specific COVID-19 reopening strategies in order to ensure the health and wellness of their employees at all times.

As suggested by the World Health Organization and medical experts from the top pharmaceutical companies in India, here are some of the key prevention tips that all offices must follow to reduce COVID-19 transmission at work:

1. Keep your workplace clean

A clean and hygienic workplace provides assurance to the employees that they are in a safe place. Therefore, make sure that you get all surfaces and objects that are prone to contamination regularly cleaned and disinfected. This includes desks, tables, chairs, floor, telephones, etc. Doing so will not only lower the risk of virus transmission at your workplace but also improve employee productivity by reducing the number of illness-related lost working days.

2. Maintain social distancing

Social distancing is perhaps the most important preventive measure that you need to take in order to keep your workplace free from the COVID-19 disease. Ensure that your employees sit at a distance of at least six feet from one another and greet each other with the traditional namaste instead of shaking hands.

3. Encourage regular hand-washing or sanitization

Washing hands thoroughly with soap and water or sanitizing them with an alcohol-based sanitizer/rub can kill the virus on your hands and prevent the transmission of COVID-19 disease. Therefore, you should ensure that hand sanitizing dispensers are placed at several places around the workplace. You can also display posters that promote regular hand washing and sanitization at prominent places in the workplace. In addition, you should also make sure that any visitors that come to your office have access to places where they can sanitize their hands or wash them with soap and water.

4. Promote good respiratory hygiene

Practicing good respiratory hygiene is one of the key steps to preventing the spread of COVID-19 at work. Ask your employees to wear a face mask inside the office premises at all times. It would be a good idea if you distribute face masks to your employees. Moreover, you should display posters of good respiratory hygiene practices at the most frequently visited places in your workplace. Apart from this, paper tissues should also be made available to the employees along with closed bins where the tissues can be safely disposed of.

5. Communicate important information

Amidst the ongoing pandemic, it is important that you ask your employees to stay at home or work from home if they have an infected person in their community or develop symptoms of COVID-19 such as cough, cold, or fever, no matter how mild the symptoms are. You should regularly communicate such messages to your employees through email, video meetings, or the most widely used communication channels in your organization.

Getting your office ready for battling and preventing COVID-19 can be a challenging task. However, following a few important safety protocols can not only keep the disease at bay but also keep your business up and running. Therefore, be prepared, create a safe and hygienic office environment, and allow your business to flourish in this new normal.